"The Frank Lloyd Wright who emerges here is vague and unsympathetic," said Sean O'Hagan in the Observer, reviewing TC Boyle's The Women. "The most intriguing character here is [Wright's second wife] Miriam, but her emotional extremism becomes exhausting ... My guess is that, had Boyle created her, he would have had a lot more fun at her expense. That same problem dogs the book as a whole: the real existence of these characters dilutes Boyle's considerable satirical skill." "Wright's life was so novelettish, so crammed with scandal, devastating fires, equally incandescent romances, gory slayings and chicanery, that there's not much scope for creative dramatisation," agreed Penny Perrick in the Sunday Times. "But Boyle has given the story a sly twist by leaving its telling to a narrator who is as cool-tempered and honest as Wright is slithery and treacherous." "Wright's private life was extraordinarily turbulent ... but for the purposes of a novelist it played itself out in the wrong order, so that the really dramatic stuff happens not in the climactic chapters, but in the middle," observed Toby Clements in the Sunday Telegraph. "How Wright managed to maintain the quality, quantity and inventiveness of his architectural practice throughout the maelstrom of his home life remains a mystery," said Colin Amery in the Spectator. "Sadly his character doesn't develop in the novel - for that you have to look at his buildings."

"Throughout the Bush presidency, and especially after the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq, the name of Halliburton became a focus for allegations of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism," wrote Anthony Holden in the Daily Telegraph, reviewing Halliburton's Army. "Now Pratap Chatterjee, an investigative reporter with the requisite degree of determination and doggedness, has travelled the world with the blazing sense of injustice required to put factual flesh on conjectural bones ... The 'army' of this book's title is the vast foreign legion of third-world workers the company imports to war zones to service the US military." "This is a poorly written and laborious read," said Demetri Sevastopulo in the Financial Times. "Chatterjee does highlight the tendency of Halliburton to hire 'third country nationals' from countries such as the Philippines, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, who are sometimes conned by employment agencies into heading to Iraq. But he does not examine a broad enough sample of these workers to determine whether they are being exploited, or given salaries and opportunities, however dangerous, that may not exist in their own countries."

Con Coughlin's Khomeini's Ghost is "a surprisingly dispassionate and workmanlike account of the life and times of Khomeini", wrote Anne Penketh in the Independent. "But where are the killer revelations that one might expect? Alas, there are none." Nevertheless, "Coughlin is right to dwell on the role of the Revolutionary Guards ... the shock troops of the revolution, [who] have over the years become a state within a state." "The main substance of Khomeini's Ghost [is] a fast-paced account of the events leading up to, during and following Khomeini's triumphant return to Teheran in February 1979," said Rachel Aspden in the Sunday Telegraph. "The tale of the revolution and its attendant alliances, betrayals, terrors and exultation is a narrative gift and Coughlin handles it deftly ... As Khomeini's Ghost shows, the strange stories of the Islamic revolution need little embellishment."